Abstract:
Paper presented at the 27th Annual Southern African Transport Conference 7 - 11 July 2008 "Partnership for research and progress in transportation", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa. ABSTRACT:Pavement response modelling based on the theory of linear elasticity was introduced in
South Africa in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Since that time, continuous developments
took place, and today it is possible to determine the stress/strain distribution of
multi-layered road pavement problems in a matter of seconds. This paper provides an
overview of historical developments, followed by the introduction of new software and the
validation thereof. In the latest version of the Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Analysis
and Design Software (me-PADS v1.1), the previous ELSYM5 analysis engine was
replaced by General Analysis of Multi-layered Elastic Systems (GAMES) software. Among
the advantages of GAMES are the ability to model multiple pavement layers and loads, the
inclusion of layer interface slip and higher accuracy close to the pavement surface. In the
present study the results generated using GAMES for a number of standard load cases
are compared to those of a range of other packages used world wide. Newly developed
Finite Element Method for Pavement Analysis (FEMPA) software, which is currently only
available for use in a research environment, is also benchmarked against these other
packages. The results show that both the GAMES and FEMPA packages can be used with
confidence.
Description:
This paper was transferred from the original CD ROM created for this conference. The material on the CD ROM was published using Adobe Acrobat technology. The original CD ROM was produced by Document Transformation Technologies Postal Address: PO Box 560 Irene 0062 South Africa. Tel.: +27 12 667 2074 Fax: +27 12 667 2766 E-mail: doctech@doctech.co.za URL: http://www.doctech.co.za
